Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Innovent Biologics is now joining the global race to find a possible solution for the coronavirus pandemic. The Suzhou-based company stated that it is currently working on identifying antibodies that can terminate the deadly virus.
According to the company, finding a cure rather than a vaccine for the virus will be much more effective given how the virus can mutate. Similar to the seasonal flu vaccine, the treatment will not work for everyone all the time. The virus, which has already mutated several times, can do so once again, rendering current vaccines useless.
Innovent Biologics is currently doing studies and research on antibodies taken from people who have successfully recovered from the COVID-19 respiratory disease. Even if it can successfully identify the antibodies, Innovent Biologics disclaimed that it will likely take about a year to develop the drug and prepare it for its first human clinical trials.
The company hopes that its treatment will become a long-term cure against the virus. This will be a much better solution to the problem even though it will take much longer to develop when compared to a vaccine. Time is of course of the essence as the virus has now infected more than 1 million people globally, with over 50,000 people dead.
Innovent Biologics is best known for being the first company to have its immunology-based PD-1 anti-cancer drug covered by China's national health insurance system. The company mainly develops and produces monoclonal antibody drugs for cancer, autoimmune, cardiovascular, and ophthalmology treatments.
Since the start of the spread earlier in the year, drug developers around the world have all scrambled to develop vaccines and treatments. Other companies are conducting clinical trials for existing antiviral drugs to see its effectiveness in eradicating the new coronavirus.
Apart from Innovent Biologics, another Chinese company called CanSino Biologics is conducting clinical trials for its proposed COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The company is working with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences during the trials. Meanwhile, Shanghai-based cancer drug maker I-Mab Biopharma has filed to applications in the US and South Korea to run clinical trials on its own antibody drug to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus.
The Chinese companies are currently competing with other drugmakers around the world such as the US drugmaker Moderna. The Massachusetts-based company is already conducting human trials on its proposed vaccine. Several other pharmaceutical companies are also slowly putting forward their own treatments and running similar trails to test the efficacy of their drugs.
